1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a technique where printing is performed using a printing head which has a plurality of nozzle rows.
2. Background Technology
In an ink jet printer which is one type of printing device, due to alternatingly repeating a dot forming action where dots are formed on a sheet of paper by ink being discharged from a nozzle on a printing head which moves in a movement direction and a transport action where the sheet of paper is transported in a transport direction, an image is printed by a plurality of dot rows (raster lines) along the movement direction being lined up in the transport direction on the sheet of paper.
In recent years, high quality image printing is possible in ink jet printers, but on the other hand, there is a desire to print a high quality image in a short period of time. Then, as the method of shortening the printing time, there is a so-called “blank skipping” method.
Blank skipping is performing the transport action with a large amount of transporting so as to skip a blank region in a case of printing a printing region and a blank region so as to line up in the transport direction on one sheet of paper. Then, in the current state of affairs, blank skipping methods such as Patent Documents 1 and 2 described below are proposed.
Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-216641 (Patent Document 1) and Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2007-237461 (Patent Document 2) are examples of the related art.
In well-known techniques, a blank region is detected depending on various conditions, but cases occur where the conditions are not satisfied and blank skipping is not possible even though blank skipping is essentially possible.